Zendesk Acquires Live Chat Provider Zopim
Zendesk announced today that it has acquired Zopim Technologies, a Singapore-based provider of live chat software, to expand the chat capabilities of its customer service platform.
"Real-time chat has become the foundation for how customers want to communicate online today. It is convenient for customers and makes companies more approachable to more people," said Mikkel Svane, founder and CEO of Zendesk, in a statement. "Zopim has a proven track record of providing tools for proactive engagement. Most importantly, the Zopim team shares our belief in building products that are beautifully simple and easy for any company to use."
Zendesk plans to integrate Zopim chat with its customer service platform in the coming months to offer live and proactive chat for its customers. Zendesk expects that Zopim will ultimately be bundled in all Zendesk customer service platform trials as part of the integration, and existing Zendesk customers will have new options for adding Zopim to their accounts.
Zopim will continue to be sold as a standalone live chat tool, and in the future its customers will gain more options for buying and using Zendesk's full customer service platform. Zopim, founded in 2008 in Singapore, offers both free and paid live chat plans. Web sites use its widget to offer chat in more than 150 countries around the world.
"We started Zopim with a vision of changing the way businesses interact with their customers," said Royston Tay, Zopim's CEO and co-founder, in a statement. "Zendesk's culture and focus on building great customer experiences fit our own philosophy. Together, we believe we'll be able to improve the customer experience for even more businesses around the world."
As a result of the acquisition, Zopim is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Zendesk, and the entire Zopim team is expected to remain intact.
Zendesk hasn't made many acquisitions, but it has been filing a lot of integrations in the past few months. Since December, it has integrated its technology with offerings from Five9, Viralheat, TeamViewer, 8x8, Survey Monkey, and MailChimp.